“Brooklyn Boy” by A Brooklyn Boy

"Brooklyn Boy" by A Brooklyn Boy
Enduring Lessons from a time and place
March 9, 2007

 

When Chase Kniffen, the Special Projects Manager, of the Barksdale Theatre and Theatre IV invited to be on a panel to discuss the play "Brooklyn Boy," I quickly checked my calendar and responded in the affirmative. He provoked by curiosity by saying that it addressed issues related to the Jewish faith, and that it was being presented as part of the Acts of Faith Festival. I just couldn't resist, for I was the true Brooklyn boy, whose parents and younger brother were all born in that storied borough, and to where I often returned while my grandmother lived there. As a slightly adopted saying goes: "You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can't take Brooklyn out of the boy." It also explains why I root for the Dodgers, even though they are in Los Angeles.

My disclaimer from the beginning: I don't receive any royalties or remuneration for these comments. And, yes, please go see the play. It is showing until March 25th. I will not give away the ending in these remarks.

The essence of the play:

Eric Weiss is born in Brooklyn and has become a successful writer, with a book on the best seller list. His father is dying in Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn – where I was born – and he has come back to visit. The father was a shoe salesman. Perhaps I immediately identified with this scene because I vividly remember Mr. Kaplan who sold be my shoes on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. There is clear tension between Eric and his father. The son has traveled a road away from his origin, nearly severing his connection. In a sense of reaching out to his father, he has dedicated his book to "His Mother and Father" but without using their names. This becomes a burning fight between them. I will return to this issue.

While in the hospital he meets Ira, whose mother is dying in the hospital. Ira is a friend from his youth, who didn't leave Brooklyn, but took, over his father's delicatessen. He has also become religious, as evinced by his kippah. From his accent he is really Brooklyn. Eric has mostly lost his, just like me. While there is recognition, Eric has clearly rejected Brooklyn, the history of his youth, and his faith. He refuses to go daven with Ira.

It is clear from later scenes that Eric is unfulfilled. He is still searching for something that he cannot express or identify. He is presented with the possibilities of fame, sex and money. None of them will fill the void in his soul. He has also married a non-Jewish woman, but that marriage is ending, and yet, Eric Weiss has no greater satisfaction one way or the other.

The play arrives at a climax that I will not reveal. It hampers me in making these remarks, but because I really encourage you to experience the play which is far beyond my words. I stop my recapitulation of the play at this point and evaluate some of the issues that I have already revealed.

The author of this play is Donald Margulies. I do not know him nor do I know what he knows about Judaism. But this play has put its finger on a theme and its exposition resonates deeply and personally with me.

While in Brooklyn I knew that I was Jewish, there was little transmission of Judaism to me by my parents. My singular memory as a child is standing on the balcony in a hotel that was converted into a shul for Rosh HaShanah - Yom Kippur for a short time. My Judaism truly began when we moved out of Brooklyn to New Jersey and joined a Conservative synagogue. It is hard to know what Judaism Eric Weiss had that he could reject. Perhaps all that he knew was superficial trappings and that did not give him real religious stuff to which to hold near and dear. Did Eric Weiss ever have a faith which he could accept or reject? That question transcends the time and place of my youth, this play.

Who here defines their Jewishness through the prism of faith?

Whose Jewish identity derives from Judaism, an intrinsic entity and not an extrinsic entity?

While his friend Ira is clearly defined by faith, his Judaism, by which he responds to his mother's illness and his father's earlier death, despite being born in Brooklyn and identifiably Jewish, Eric doesn't have a faith by which to rise or support his fall. Your answers to my question are private: Who here does?

Again, not reading Donald Margulies' mind but watching his play, I believe that he is making the following statement:

Some people (how many? Who knows?) find meaning for their lives, regardless what they do, feel that their lives are purposeful, when they touch and are touched by the stuff of eternity. That "stuff" is God, as found in faith. They can handle illness and death, catastrophe and calamity because they have faith in God. As we posit in our faith that God is eternal, without end nor beginning, as we sing in both Adon Olam and Yigdal – being creeds of faith and not just songs sung to any tune – we become eternal ourselves. In that we transcend our limitedness, our timeliness. The past is not distant and we are part of an unending future. Life is bigger and longer that ourselves and our years. That is a purposeful and meaningful life, whether you work in a delicatessen, shoe store or the ivory tower.

Eric Weiss, the Brooklyn boy, is confronted by ersatz sources of meaning. He is presented with fame, with fortune, with sex – in marriage with the attractive opposite and out of marriage, with a young beauty. In each scene of the play where these are presented, they fail to satisfy Eric. There is something missing. They are too shallow. They are to ephemeral. They don't speak to the deep yearning of his soul. And one by one, he rejects them. When I was interviewed by Celia Wren for the review in last Sunday's Times-Dispatch I said to her and she included it in her article, that this play addresses the search for ultimate meaning. Whether we realize it or not in our lives, we are always questing for something. Are we questing for what is true, what is right? Are we questing for something that is ephemeral – here today and gone tomorrow? I think that this is very difficult for us. We live in a time of instant gratification and we want so much so fast. We have to have a zillion stations on a million pieces of electronics and respond instantaneously to a billion stimuli. And then our sensory system gets bored and wants even more and even faster. That universe is the transient and the temporary. It is the illusion that blinds us from the eternal. It is the delusion in which we deprive ourselves of God.

So, why did Eric's father Manny demand that the book be inscribed with his name and not the generic "father?" When I shared this with the panel, they were astonished and astounded. In the prophets we read that God promises to "l'hakeem yad vashem," "to erect an everlasting memorial" – an eternal memorial – eternal because God will do it, and what He touches is eternal. The Hebrew phrase is the name of the first Holocaust Memorial which is located in Jerusalem. The Hebrew literally means hand and name but it is an idiom and not used literally. Yet in the play there is the clear connection that Manny Weiss believes, as he is dying, that he will be granted immortality when, literally, his name is inscribed in the book. Through his son and his son's work he will live, even when he dies. Eric Weiss, at this juncture in the play, doesn't yet understand immortality and doesn't have a sense of eternity. His father does.

Do we?

Where will you find it?

When?

How?

What will you do with it?

Will you bless your children with it?

Will they bless you?

Enjoy the play.

Shabbat Shalom.